


Huntress

by KurokoNoBasukeTrash



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Eventual Romance, Nonbinary Character, Pale Elf Headcanons, Slow Burn, but I'm going to stick to she/her most of the time for simplicity, eventual meaning small hints at it and nothing solid until we reach Deadfire territory, i don't know how to tag, it won't have much impact aside from a few conversations, oc fic, really just read the notes for more information, she uses she/her and they/them pronouns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 16:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18014216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KurokoNoBasukeTrash/pseuds/KurokoNoBasukeTrash
Summary: Looking upon the tribe she rebuilt from the ground up, a deep dissatisfaction rang through her. She had done it. Taken the pieces of something that had once been great and made it better than it had been before. Now she felt her heart pulling her away, away from the icy tundra of White That Wends, south to what she knew as the Dyrwood. No reason presented itself to her other than the obvious.He had left to the south.No longer could she stand to fix his mess. He would return, whether he wanted to or not, and receive his just due. Her decision made, the Pale Elf turned sharply in to the village she called home. Her gaze set now with a renewed determination and the wooden carving hidden below many layers of fur burned hot against her chest.It was time to hunt.





	Huntress

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to warn you, the first few chapters will move a bit,,, slow. In general, I'm going to stick to the main story (and large events) with this work. I may write small connected stories for side quests, but overall the bulk of this will be the main story Act I-IIII. That said, this will probably still be long and until I figure out a writing style and way to compress my chapters a bit more, it will stay that way. I have a lot of thoughts and I want to put them all into here if I can, as long as they fit.
> 
> The actual content in the game won't be touched on until the third chapter. Everything up until then is solidifying a bit of Salta's personality, character, and motivation. I hope you can enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it.

The deer pawed at the ground nervously, almost as if it knew a pair of white eyes followed it. Salta wouldn’t put it past the creature. Deer had proved wily creatures compared to the bulky Elk of her land. They scented her far sooner, spotted her white skin and hair from miles away. She had taken to smothering her bright natural tones in white and wrapping her hair up in layers of animal skins. The shot was almost lined up. A shift to the right would secure the kill – at least until the damned deer’s ears shot up and it bolted. A curse left her lips before she could stop it, and the Pale Elf slumped back with a sigh. A huff of warm air comforted her, followed quickly by a damp nose on her cheek. She smiled wryly at her antelope partner.

“I’ll get the next one. Maybe I need more dirt. What do you think, River?” She pat him on the neck, standing swiftly. A gentle bray reassured her that she was doing great. Slowly, her smile faded. Her gaze traveled around the area with a critical eye. Something was off. There was no way she could’ve alerted the deer, at least not yet. That begged the question; what had? Did the deer just decide it felt something was off, or was there more than one hunter with their eyes on her quarry? No matter the answer, she’d have to leave that particular doe. An escaped beast was twice as cautious.

The journey back to the main road was a fairly peaceful one. She spotted a fox’s red tail waving in the air as it trotted off with a rabbit in its mouth and silently wished it well. She envied its red color. Even a bright red would blend better than she did. Her pale skin had been a blessing in The White That Wends. Her hair, skin, and eyes were all such a similar shade of white that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Discerning her features was especially difficult in the light if someone were to face the angle it fell across her face on. This had made hunting far easier for her than others. She simply had to be quiet and no prey would see her coming. Now she saw her perception of her own skill was off. She was a good hunter at best, average at worst. She had managed to provide for herself for this long, so she couldn’t be bad at hunting. The prey was not so foolish as to be trumped by a weak predator.

Not for the first time, Salta wished River could be more helpful in hunting. The antelope was dear to her, but was little help when it was time to find food. He was perfectly content to graze in the grasses but she could not find a full meal in the tiny green stalks. What was heaven to him was hellish to her. It was only fair she supposed. Already he looked plumper than he had when they started this journey. The antelope gazed at her with his too-smart eyes as she affectionately patted his side, stepping onto the path. The sun had fallen a bit in the sky, but there was plenty of light to travel by. She continued on the road for a bit in silence. On the sun’s movement, she guessed it had been about two hours. On the side of the road ahead, she spotted a grouping of tents. A camp.

It wasn’t quite so late that she couldn’t continue on, but company was welcome. The road was lonely, the few she did meet often gave her nothing more than a gruff nod. It was lonely, so different from how she had lived before. A sharp pang struck her heart without warning, seeming to echo in the corners of her eyes. She wiped the tears away before they could fully form. She’d return. Just not yet. After all, she had a job to do.

Salta approached the camp carefully, well aware it could be home to bandits or some similarly unsavory folk. The camp was made up of lightly armed guards, circled around a group of well-dressed men and women. As she neared, Salta realized there were caravan wagons concealed in the trees. Clever. Now she had little doubt these were merchants. She clipped her bow to her back, lifting her hands slightly into the air as a guard jumped at her appearance.

“Halt! Who goes there?” The guard she was looking at seemed young. The armor was loose around his shoulders and seemed just a little big everywhere else. He did not hold his sword with confidence. She wondered at the merchant’s budget if they could not afford better. He was obviously spooked, face pale as if he had seen a ghost. He was human, unsurprisingly.

“Salta, of the Still River Clan.” He had a blank expression on his face as if she had said something in an ancient language. With a sigh, she rectified her introduction. “Or you could call me a drifter. For now. May I rest here? I’ll gladly sacrifice some coin for a fire and some company tonight.” His face suddenly flushed a bright red, and he rubbed the back of his neck. He stumbled and stuttered so badly over his next words that she honestly had no idea what he said.

“Bloody hell Aaron! I can’t let you handle anything.” One of the other guards finally made their way over. She was a tall, gorgeous woman. Her hair was raven black, skin fair with specklings of freckles. Her eyes were black and somehow alluring. It was something about the shape – she seemed to have a permanent dip to her eyelids. She looked like she might be able to snap a neck with her bare hands.

Maybe Salta just had odd taste.

“I-I’m sorry Uanie…she…I didn’t know how – how do I respond to that?” The poor boys face was still incredibly red.

“First off, unless she’s got a cock to her hip and a wink in her eye, take it literally you dumb boy. She didn’t mean it like that.” After a few moments, Salta finally understood. She felt amused, though not enough to truly laugh. She was flattered, really. She didn’t have typically attractive, slim features most tended to stumble over. Her nose was larger and shaped a bit boxy. She cut her hair roughly, apart from the one braid extending out from the short mess. Her body was not quite as shapely as often preferred. If she wore clothing bulky enough, she could be mistaken for a man. Really it wasn’t something she minded. She was often identified swiftly by her smooth voice, and there wasn’t any harm in being mistaken for a man. All it meant was that she just wasn’t the type who earned many suitors. Especially not when she was covered in dirt.

“Sorry about Aaron. Poor boy is…fresh. Jumps to conclusions. Thought the last guy to hang around us was trying to get into his britches too.” She shook her head and sighed. “You’re welcome to hang around. You don’t need to fork over any currency to talk, just expect those coin-guzzlers over there to push their wares on you every other sentence.” Uaine nodded and motioned her into the camp. The boy, Aaron, looked like he wanted to say something but held his tongue. There were three people at the fire. Salta took her place to sit by a merchant who seemed to be admiring a dagger in the light of the fire. He didn’t seem interested in her company, so she raised her voice to talk to the man across the fire.

“What brings you to travel down this road?” This man was an elf, the only one in the group. He had fiery red hair and an odd spark in his green eyes. His belt held a variety of bottles with liquids of different colors inside. Salta had never taken well to potions. She didn’t carry them on her if she could help it most times.

“Good trade. We’re headed to the Gilded Vale; they want my potions there. Always have been good customers of mine. Especially if I perfect my new…experiment.” His voice was surprisingly pleasant. She decided he could probably talk her into buying some of his stock, and to avoid lingering on the subject of potions _too_ long. Still, she couldn’t help feeling a bit curious.

“Experiment? A new type of potion, then?” She wasn’t prepared for him to leap to his feet, body shaking with excitement. The man beside her groaned, muttering something under his breath, and the other at the campfire immediately stood to chat around the tents with a few others.

“You really want to hear?”

“As long as it’s not something grotesque.”

“No; if anything it will stop the grotesque! I’ve been working on a theory for this for ages, let me get my notes…” He disappeared swiftly into a tent and she sat back to wait. He returned with a leather-bound notebook. The covers were worn and it looked like a few pages were hardly clinging to the spine. The elf thumbed through the pages until he found the one he apparently wanted and cleared his throat. “You’ll know of Waidwen’s Legacy, correct?” He sounded so sure of himself that she almost felt bad answering honestly.

“No.”

‘Well I have a – you haven’t?”

“Not at all. I am new to this land.”

He observed her quietly for a moment. “True. You certainly stick out here. Well, I’ll give you the short of it. It started with St. Waidwen and the Saints War…” He launched into a long-winded history lesson. Salta felt her attention drop off at multiple points, but she gathered enough to understand the general gist. She felt like she would’ve done better if she were given a book.

“So the Hollowborn are born without a soul? How do they function?”

“They don’t! Well, not well at least. They just kind of stare off into the distance and get taken care of. Some animancers have tried filling the empty void with the soul of an animal. It didn’t go quite as well as it could have. Imagine as a mother you think your daughter’s cured, but suddenly she drops to all fours, barks, and scampers off to pee on a nearby tree? Of course that’s the light of it. The animancers didn’t use the souls of dogs. Those children were terrifying.”

Salta pressed her lips together firmly. “Putting animal souls in human bodies? That seems…wrong. Unnatural. Souls are placed in their own bodies for a reason.”

“Exactly! I told my peers that, but most didn’t listen. They were desperate.”

“Peers?”

He grinned almost sheepishly. “I never got around to that part, did I? I’ve dabbled in animancy. Nothing much – I’m an alchemist, I don’t usually deal in souls.”

“Why deal in them now, then?”

“And now we’re back on track! Behold.”

He held out the leather journal, open to the same page. Salta took it with care, eyes flitting over the runes inscribed. Almost immediately, she was enthralled. She didn’t quite understand a lot of it. There were odd words that had to be related to either animancy or alchemy that she just hadn’t heard before. She was a hunter, not some sort of mystic. Still, it was fascinating. From what she understood, he was trying to craft a potion that would help the soulless children. Her finger absentmindedly traced the tired spine, thumb of her other hand running along the pages under the words she read. She noted that the bottoms of pages were signed with the name ‘Lorin,’ in a quick messy print. Most of the writing was messy, in fact. It was all too soon that he gestured for her to return the journal.

“So, basically, I’ve been working on a potion that will call a soul to the child. It’s not been easy. I’m hoping I can perfect it by the time I reach Gilded Vale, but if not I plan to continue on to Defiance Bay and seek guidance from the animancers in the Sanitarium. I’ve been having difficulty finding a way to bind the animancy to the objects after they’ve been mixed into the potion, and binding it to the potion itself renders the effect too weak. I’ve also run into the issue of attracting strong enough souls – for now we’re stuck where we were with animal souls. Those are the only ones I can seem to attract even before brewing it into a potion.”

“That sounds like it will be difficult – and possibly just as bad. Where would the souls come from? Would they stay? Are you turning another Hollowborn – or Hollow-made? – by doing so? Without the assistance of animancers more skilled, you might overlook something.”

Lorin paused, looking over to her. He seemed oddly pleased despite her criticism. “I’m still thinking on it. I doubt I’ll finish by the time we reach the vale anyway. This type of thing could take a few days or a few hundred years. It’s up to a great deal of skill and a dash of luck.”

“It’s a noble cause. If there’s anything I could do to help, I’d be glad to.”

“You’ve done the best you could for me already. No one here likes to listen. I’ve been _dying_ to tell someone and the only other person we’ve run into that wanted to chat walked off halfway through. I don’t think I was important enough for someone like him to care.”

Salta shook her head. “The research you are doing is important, if a little…distasteful. He seems foolish to write it off.”

“Nay, just uninterested. Probably busy doing the gods’ work.”

“A priest, then?”

 “Godlike. Bloody pretty one too.””

She felt herself still, and off to the side River ceased eating a nice mouthful of grass. He gazed intently at her, as if concerned. “Pretty? How so?”

“Well, he was kinda small for a godlike. He had this longer real curly hair, looked a bit like a woman. Gorgeous eyes and real nice clothes too. His…agh, what are they called again? Horns, crest? It was real small. He had a little star under his eye.” Lorin’s brow was furrowed in concentration. It was obvious he was having some difficulty remembering, as if it had been a while ago. “He also had a wolf with him. They seemed real close, sorta like you and that antelope.”

Now Salta held herself perfectly still. It was all she could do to keep herself from quivering with anger – and anticipation. She hadn’t dared to hope she’d find a lead so soon, yet she had stumbled upon one by accident. The pale elf tilted her head to the side, feigning simple curiosity. “How long ago did he pass through?”

“Few months ago. He was headed out towards Defiance Bay; don’t know why, think he just wanted to see the city.”

“Maybe I’ll run into him then.” She was well aware her voice was a bit quieter. She stood, brushing some dirt off the brown furs she wore. Her thirst to adventure was renewed, but she felt tiredness tugging at her limbs. It was time to rest. She bade Lorin a well night, and he retired to his tent. She hadn’t even realized how late the two of them had stayed up, talking. No one else was left outside apart from the guards. River settled on the ground and Salta lowered to lay against him. The happiness in her eyes had faded, replaced with an almost thoughtful rue. She reached under one of her furs, wrapping her fingers around the wooden pendant hidden beneath. She traced her fingers along the tips of the carved ears, down past the eyes and gently rubbed its nose.

“I’ve found the trail,” she whispered. Her eyes slid shut slowly, methodically. “The hunt begins.”

**Author's Note:**

> There's the first chapter! A bit of a mess that could really use some beta-reading... ;)))
> 
> ((Please someone beta for me. I need help.))


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